Milosivanovic: Created page with "== Finding out file creation time == Only available on ext4.
Use the `stat` command - the file creation time will be denoted as the `Bir..."`


2015-01-16T03:01:33Z
Created page with "== Finding out file creation time == Only available on <strong>ext4</strong>.<br /> Use the <code>stat</code> command - the file creation time will be denoted as the <code>Bir..."
New page
== Finding out file creation time ==

Only available on <strong>ext4</strong>.<br />

Use the <code>stat</code> command - the file creation time will be denoted as the <code>Birth</code> time.



<pre>

root@milos-debian:~# stat .bashrc

  File: `.bashrc'

  Size: 570             Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file

Device: fe01h/65025d    Inode: 391924      Links: 1

Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)

Access: 2015-01-16 01:05:05.172328004 +1300

Modify: 2010-02-01 00:52:26.000000000 +1300

Change: 2014-10-27 16:41:41.178458115 +1300

 Birth: -

</pre>



If it shows up as <code>&mdash;</code> (as above), then the <code>stat</code> command does not yet support getting this information from the kernel. Thankfully, you can still get the birth time using <code>debugfs</code>:

<pre>debugfs -R 'stat <inode_number>'</pre>



''The angle quotes, < and >, are required!''



Find the file's inode number (<code>ls -li <file></code>):

<pre>

root@milos-debian:~# ls -li .bashrc

391924 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 570 Feb  1  2010 .bashrc

</pre>



And then use it:

<pre>root@milos-debian:~# debugfs -R 'stat <391924>' /dev/vda1

Inode: 391924   Type: regular    Mode:  0644   Flags: 0x80000

Generation: 2468252752    Version: 0x00000000:00000001

User:     0   Group:     0   Size: 570

File ACL: 0    Directory ACL: 0

Links: 1   Blockcount: 8

Fragment:  Address: 0    Number: 0    Size: 0

 ctime: 0x544dbef5:2a8c380c -- Mon Oct 27 16:41:41 2014

 atime: 0x54b7acf1:29161110 -- Fri Jan 16 01:05:05 2015

 mtime: 0x4b656efa:00000000 -- Mon Feb  1 00:52:26 2010

crtime: 0x544dbef5:2a8c380c -- Mon Oct 27 16:41:41 2014

Size of extra inode fields: 28

EXTENTS:

(0):1606693

</pre>

Linux/Agnostic - Revision history

Milosivanovic: Created page with "== Finding out file creation time == Only available on ext4. Use the stat command - the file creation time will be denoted as the Bir..."

Milosivanovic: Created page with "== Finding out file creation time == Only available on ext4.
Use the `stat` command - the file creation time will be denoted as the `Bir..."`